Impact

New parking services will debut in coming months

Feb 18, 2016, 10:17 AM
by
Stephen Hadley

A multitude of parking changes aimed at improving the patient experience and enhancing parking for faculty, staff and students will take effect over the next few months to coincide with the opening of the new Jennie Sealy Hospital.

The Plaza Parking Garage (Garage 8) will be transitioned to patient and visitor parking only by early April, while the Administration Garage (Garage 1) will become contract-only once patient parking is transitioned to the Plaza Garage. Carlos Escobar, associate vice president of Business Operations and Facilities, said current contract holders at the Plaza Garage were relocated to nearby parking facilities on Jan. 30 to give crews time to update the garage by early April.

In addition to the proposed changes to the Plaza and Administration garages, other new parking services are set to launch over the next few months. New gates with a ticketing system and a cashier booth will be added to the patient lot of the Primary Care Pavilion on Harborside Drive. Parking in the patient lot will still be free with validations, similar to UTMB’s other public parking areas. Behind the Primary Care Pavilion will be paid, employee contract parking using hangtags. A similar gate and ticketing system with validation for patients is being implemented at the League City Campus.

UTMB staff responsible for assisting patients with parking validations will no longer need to handle tokens. The new validation system will be electronically accessible through their desktop computers.

Neil Hart, director of Auxiliary Enterprises, said several information sessions to explain the validation process have been held over the past month.